Re: [tdf-discuss] Basic question about Oracle asking OOo community members to leave

----- Original Message ----

> From: Andre Schnabel <Andre.Schnabel@gmx.net>
> > Perhaps there is another issue at play here.
> >  Yes, Oracle was invited to contribute to TDF; but the current discussion
> >  on TDF 
> > membership and documents on-line seem to forbid  organizations.
>
> At first, we are just discussing at the moment - everyone  who wants
> to have her points to be considered, may join the discussion. I  have no
> problem if people from Oracle would joind and tell, that we  could
> consider some points, so that it is more likely that Oracle  would
> join us.  
>
> At the moment there is no indication at all,  that Oracle is interested
> to join the foundation or even the  discussion.
>
>
> Second - the current idea is that organizsations could  join indirectly
> through their member's (staff) contributions. This idea works  quite well
> for e.g. Gnome foundation. There are other models and we need to  find 
> something to make organizations happy to join. We must take  responsibility
> to discuss this as  well.

But that's the point. Oracle may want to participate as an organization and no 
indirectly through its staff members.
That part alone may be what is causing some of the riff.

> From: Mike Dupont <jamesmikedupont@googlemail.com>
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 4:14 PM, BRM <bm_witness@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >  Oracle just spent several billion dollars buying Sun - at least part of 
> which  would have been for OOo and
> > all its assets.
> Is it buying the  software, or the community, or the market?
> Ok, well surly it bought the  rights to the patents, and the development team.
> According to the press  release it wanted Java and Solaris, not mysql or  OOO.
> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/018363

It certainly bought the infrastructure, patents, trade marks, etc; as well as a 
strong say in how OOo progresses.
I don't know their intentions, etc; just pointing out that (as much as I may 
like TDF myself) there may be another aspect to their response.
 
> How to put a  price on the trust of the community? If a company or
> organization wants the  trust of a community, it needs to do something
> for it.
> It will be a  good test of oracles good will how it deals with the
> community and I would  say that is the most important part of any
> project,
> it cannot be bought,  it must be fed and taken care of.

Agreed, and I think TDF is a good way of pro-actively helping to protect the 
community that way - versus how they treated the OpenSolaris project.

> In any case, I maintain that it is very hard to put  a dollar value on
> the value of the source code with no community behind  it.

Agreed; though there is a dollar value to the source-code for OOo and 
infrastructure that supports it; as well as the employees of Sun/Oracle.

Again, I'm just trying to point out that there may be another aspect in how TDF 
was put together that may be making Oracle feel shunned even though they were 
invited.

It's kind of like forking Android, inviting Google to join, and then saying 
well, the developers can join but Google can only contribute, versus having an 
organization like Open Handset Alliance.

That said, I do like TDF (so please do not get me wrong) and hope this all works 
out, and am looking forward to hopefully contributing code at some point in the 
future.

Ben


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